If flying United Airlines has you yearning to hear a full version of its longtime theme music, George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” you’ll be able to cue up that Jazz Age classic in Spotify on the seatback screens of its planes. 

The Chicago-based carrier announced Thursday that it’s bringing the streaming-audio service to the on-demand entertainment displays aboard 680-plus aircraft. 

Those include United’s international-service planes with Polaris business-class cabins (which also feature screens throughout economy) as well as an increasing number of narrowbody planes that have received a set of upgrades that include screens at every seat with Bluetooth audio for wireless headphones. 

A database maintained by outside enthusiasts shows that the airline has brought those “United Next” interiors to 57% of its narrowbody fleet.

United’s press release says a “Spotify” category will replace the “Audio” option on the home-screen menu of those displays. It also notes that streaming to your own devices via Spotify’s apps is an option on United’s small but growing set of regional jets with SpaceX Starlink satellite broadband–27 aircraft as of Thursday, per the same external database. 

Next year, United plans to add a feature that will allow passengers with Spotify’s app on their devices to log into their accounts within the seatback screen, should they want to watch any of the video podcasts Spotify began offering in 2020 on a larger screen. 

United’s announcement notes that its Spotify offering will include “specially curated versions of Spotify’s most popular playlists.” If the airline feels inspired to create one based solely on “Rhapsody in Blue,” a search of Spotify Thursday for Gershwin’s gift to the world found 12 different versions–the most interesting being a bluegrass adaptation titled “Rhapsody in Blue(grass).”

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About Rob Pegoraro

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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.

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